Culture/Society

"In a 7-2 ruling [on Monday], the Supreme Court expanded Congressional powers just a mite, by allowing the federal government to keep sexual predators in prison beyond their terms if they are deemed too dangerous to be released," U.S. News & World Report contributor Bonnie Erbe noted in a May 18 Thomas Jefferson Street blog post.The PBS "To the Contrary" host later snarked that: [T]he two…

While viewers might have expected to see the latest on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico or Tuesday's electoral primaries, CNN's Campbell Brown devoted the first two segments on her program on Monday to highlighting the apparent religious bigotry inside the U.S. Army - specifically, the upcoming lawsuit of a Muslim who alleges he was harassed and ridiculed due to his religion.Brown played the…

Editor's Note: The following was originally published yesterday at Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood blog.After news broke of fugitive child rapist Roman Polanski’s second accuser, the L.A. Times’  Patrick Goldstein wrote the following: As an admirer of his work, I’ve tried to see things from Polanski’s point of view in the past, but if these charges turn out to be true, it would be harder…

You would think that in the midst of the liberal media's fight to rip Arizona's Immigration Law, that the phrase ‘illegal immigrant' would be fairly easy to use in an appropriate manner.  Yet that is seemingly only the case when the phrase is used to cast common-sense immigration enforcement as discriminatory.  But when it comes to a story that could shed light on why enforcement is a necessity…

The recent parade of praise for The Pill wasn't unanimous. Surprisingly, Raquel Welch, one of the hottest sex symbols of the 1970s, confessed in a commentary on CNN.com that she's been married four times, but she believes that too many women are too willing to "hook up" casually, since contraceptives make it "safe" to play the field:  One significant, and enduring, effect of The Pill on female…

The birth control pill was invented 50 years ago this month. CBS Nightly News anchor Katie Couric was all set to "break out the cake and streamers." But first, she wanted to inform her viewers of a pressing national need: federal subsidies for the pill. Seriously.Couric was distraught during her "Notebook" segment last night that, in her mind, not enough women have access to birth control. Her…

On Wednesday's Newsroom, CNN's Kyra Phillips hinted that racists only come in a shade of white when she highlighted how "there's still racism in this country- KKK members, white supremacists, and less radical racists." Phillips, commenting on the controversy over a recent blacks-only field trip at a Michigan school, later expressed her approval that the segregated field trip program was being…

The Federal Communications Commission is assigned the duty of enforcing broadcast decency provisions of the Communications Act of 1934. But Barack Obama’s FCC seems to think the indecency-discouraging mission of the FCC is as outdated as Glenn Miller, even as the airwaves sound more like Ozzy Osbourne. FCC chairman Julius Genachowski is an aggressive regulator, thumbing his nose at a recent court…

The controversy over the movie Kick-Ass didn't start with whether the film would be cool enough to tempt underage kids to sneak in, but with the 11-year-old actress getting beat up and saying the foulest curse words. On the site Comicbookmovie.com, Kick-Ass director Matthew Vaughn said it was the actress Chloe Moretz's mother who pushed for her daughter to use the C-word demeaning women: "We didn…

Dan Gainor, Vice-President of Business and Culture at the MRC, appeared on the May 7 broadcast of Fox News's "America Live" to discuss the double standard at Comedy Central when it comes to mocking religious figures. Two weeks ago, Comedy Central banned "South Park" creators from mocking the prophet Mohammed because network executives didn't want to offend Muslim followers. This week,…

On Thursday's CBS Early Show, co-host Harry Smith commemorated the 50th anniversary of the invention of the birth control pill: "This week is the golden anniversary of the birth of birth control, a medical breakthrough that has changed society and the sexual landscape forever....'The Pill' promised to free women from biological bonds and it did just that." In a taped report, Smith described the…

Guess who said this: "In general, comedy in purist form always makes some people uncomfortable." Nope, it wasn't Lenny Bruce or George Carlin. It was Comedy Central's head of original programming Kent Alterman, who was defending the network's new animated show, "JC," which centers on (read: mocks) Jesus Christ.This, of course, is the same Comedy Central that two weeks ago forbade the show "South…

Liberal political pundits frequently remind Americans that words matter, which makes broadcast network reporters' coverage of Arizona's new crack down on illegal immigrants so appalling.   Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed a law on April 23 that would make it a misdemeanor for immigrants to not carry documentation proving they are in the country legally. The bill gave state law enforcement the…

[Update, 6:06 pm Eastern: CNN ran a slanted commercial promoting Tuchman's report on Anderson Cooper 360 on Monday afternoon, touting how then-Cardinal Ratzinger apparently "resisted" Bishop Cummins's requests to expel the abuser from the priesthood. (see video at right).] CNN's Gary Tuchman revisited a three-week-old story on a priest abuse case in California during a segment on Monday's AC360,…